By Ted Slowik
The Daily Southtown, Tinley Park, Ill.
HOMER TOWNSHIP, Ill. — County clerks are bracing for high turnout at the polls this November. Turnout can dip as low as 20 percent for spring primaries and local elections, but spike above 75 percent during presidential elections.
In addition to choosing between Republican Donald Trump and Democrat Hillary Clinton and a number of other contests this fall, voters in the Homer Township Fire Protection District will find a referendum on their ballots.
The question will ask whether citizens should elect the three trustees who oversee the fire district, rather than have them appointed by the Homer Township Board.
Homer Township Professional Firefighters, the union representing most of the district’s 43 employees, initiated the effort to place the question on ballots. Supporters have collected hundreds more notarized petition signatures than needed for the referendum, union President David Curtis told me.
“We have enormous support from the public,” Curtis said. “We have several hundred signatures above and beyond what is required.”
I wrote about the referendum in Sunday’s column, but I hadn’t yet connected with Curtis to tell the union’s reasons for the petition drive. We spoke by phone on Monday, and he took issue with a Speak Out comment I quoted from a reader named Ted in Homer Glen.
Ted said the union wanted to take over the board to improve their salaries and benefits.
“That’s a personal insult,” Curtis said. “The local members believe people should have the ability to know who their trustees are and ensure financial responsibility.”
Curtis said the union has made concessions to benefit taxpayers. The union and the fire district have negotiated three variances to their contract, he said. The biggest savings to taxpayers has been a reduction in the minimum staffing levels required for shifts, he said.
The contract previously set the minimum at 13 firefighter/paramedics per shift, he said. But the union agreed to reduce that by two, and supervisors previously designated as captains are now battalion chiefs who, as management, are no longer in the union. Now, the minimum staffing level per shift is 10, he said.
“From an overall safety standpoint, there have been instances where we really could have used those (additional) guys” on a shift, Curtis said. “It shows what we as a union are willing to do” to reduce costs.
Minimum staffing levels are an issue at the core of the debate over personnel costs, and not just in Homer Glen, Homer Township and the Homer Fire Protection District.
On the one hand, a minimum staffing level ensures that a sufficient number of public safety personnel are on duty at any given moment to respond to the typical volume of emergencies in a community.
If workers are on vacation or call in sick, sometimes an agency has to pay overtime to other employees called in to cover shifts and maintain minimum staffing levels. That can inflate annual salaries, upon which pensions are based.
This debate plays out in many communities. Most notably in the south suburbs, the Village of Oak Lawn has been involved in a prolonged dispute with its firefighters union over minimum staffing levels.
An arbitrator’s decision in the case is expected by November. The ruling could have legal implications on whether minimum staffing levels are a management prerogative set by a municipality or a collective bargaining matter to be negotiated in contracts.
Rather than dispute the staffing reduction and trigger a costly legal battle like in Oak Lawn, Homer firefighters agreed to the lower staffing level when the district threatened to close a fire station to reduce costs during a financial crisis, Curtis said.
"(The district was) in major financial distress and looked to the union for a way to resolve the matter,” Curtis said. “It’s a humongous sacrifice we’re willing to make. We’re very proud of it.”
He said it was “absurd” and “offensive” that someone like Ted from Homer Glen would suggest the November referendum is about the union trying to take over the board to protect salaries and benefits.
Curtis said the union has nothing against the three current fire district trustees or any issues with Homer Township Supervisor Pam Meyers and the Homer Township trustees who appointed them.
Meyers and Curtis both told me the two recently met for the first time, after media coverage of the union’s effort to collect petition signatures for the referendum.
Curtis said as far as reports that the petition drive stemmed from the inability of the union to communicate directly with trustees, the union outlined concerns in a letter requesting a meeting with trustees 11 months ago.
“We never got a meeting with them,” Curtis said. Protocol requires employees to bring concerns to the fire chief instead of directly to trustees, he said. Curtis declined to provide a copy of the letter, or go into detail about the concerns employees wanted to discuss with trustees.
I also connected with Ted from Homer Glen, whose last name is Neitzke. He’s a former railroad union leader who is committed to raising awareness about the high costs of public sector salaries and benefits.
“I gotta laugh when they talk about unions protecting the middle class,” Neitzke said. “Public unions are squeezing us dry. The private sector is like second-class citizens.”
Personnel costs are the heart of the state’s financial problems. Tax dollars pay salaries, benefits and pensions for government workers. Until robots or computers are able to teach children, fight fires, police streets, drive ambulances and perform other tasks, taxpayers are going to have to pay humans to provide those services.
It’s easy to point out the state’s $111 billion in unfunded pension liabilities and criticize the system as bloated, wasteful and inefficient. It’s tougher at the local level to say costs are out of control. You have to find out what the situation is in each small government unit.
In the Homer Township Fire Protection District, the firefighters’ union worked with the district to reduce overall costs, resulting in a benefit to taxpayers.
In November, voters will decide whether to keep the current system of having the township board appoint fire district trustees or adopt a process of electing representatives.
Voters who support the change should be prepared to also educate themselves about candidates moving forward. They should commit to voting in spring elections beginning next year, when turnouts will be low and relatively few votes could decide an election.
That’s assuming enough citizens will commit to even running for fire trustee, since many local elections are uncontested.
Could the union recruit trustee candidates who would be sympathetic to employees? Maybe. But it would only happen if residents allowed it to.
Copyright 2016 The Daily Southtown